Okay, I made it through my cleanse and reintroduced solid foods.  Four pounds total dropped in water weight over the cleanse, so yay me!  Down to 201 even. 

So starting phase 2 now, the Shred diet.  Did my first day today, and I felt like all I did was eat!  Which is good, I mean I didn’t ever feel hungry, and it’s all good food (which I spent most of Sunday prepping for the week, holy crap I was tired lol) so I know I’ve eaten far healthier today than I have in a long long time.  I also now know that the cleanse did it’s job of shrinking my stomach because I actually had a hard time eating everything he wanted me to eat at the correct portion sizes.  I just got through 3 cups of veg and 1 cup of beans for my dinner meal and 4 cups of food suddenly looked like a mountain.  That’s a good thing though, it means I’m not emotion eating, I’m just eating.

My next hurdle is the half hour of exercise.  I have to wait until after my daughter is in bed to get anything done, and then I can’t leave the house, so WiiFit for the win I guess!  I’ll make it work.  At least I walk a mile across campus three times a week so I haven’t been completely sedentary today.  Spending the hour after the kid goes to bed doing yoga and exercising is going to be a far cry from collapsing on the couch like usual!

I think I like the change though.  I can do this.

Feeling much better today.  It always amazes me how much the human body holds on to until I start to get rid of it!  Not hungry at all today, but having a few caffeine/sugar withdrawal symptoms.  The lack of cravings is such a nice feeling though.

Speaking of nice feelings, I’d also forgotten how much less pain I’m in after doing therapeutic yoga.  I am definitely keeping it in my schedule, and maybe once I get my sleep straightened out work it in twice a day.  I’m actually looking forward to starting some cardio once I’m on solids again.

Another thing that amazes me, how depression makes you forget.  After the absolute wreck of a year (year and a half, really) I’ve had, I let the depression take over and tell me what to do and how to feel.  Which is ridiculous.  Whenever I feel the numbness creeping up I picture shaking myself like a dog and change my focus.  It works pretty well actually.

I have willpower.  I decide how to live, not my hormones.  I am going to make positive changes in my life so I am living better.  Living healthier.  Being the kind on mother I want to be.  I can do this.

Okay, day two of my cleanse.  Dropped 3 lbs of bloat the first day, so I’m feeling pretty good about that.  Staying well hydrated so it is just bloat that I’m losing.  I’m going to start my nightly yoga again tonight before I start studying.

I’m having a horrible time adjusting to the daylight savings time change, and it’s killing my sleep cycle.  I could go to bed at 6:30pm and probably sleep 8 hours easy, but by the time 10:30pm comes around I sleep in 1 hour chunks.  It’s getting really annoying.  Going to have to buy some more chamomile tea I guess. 

I’m starting to feel overwhelmed again.  I really need to step back and break everything down into small steps, prioritize the things that have to be done, and remember that I’m only one person.  And I can do this.

I am writing this blog to help me with the emotional side of weight loss.  I come from a long line of obese family members, most of whom are emotional eaters.  That is my number one problem, I totally eat my stress.  I am hoping to start blogging away some of my stress to make it easier to stick to a new eating plan once I get rid of all of my bad cravings. 

Starting off, my current weight is 205lbs, which is the heaviest I have ever been outside of pregnancy.  My size 18 jeans are starting to feel tight, and I refuse to move out of misses sizes so I am taking action.  I am so out of shape, I end up panting after a 1/3 mile walk across campus and climbing a flight of stairs is agony. 

My final weight goal as of this moment is 165 lbs, which would bring me to a size 12.  I think I could be completely happy at this level, although it is still at the high end of healthy for my height (5′6″).  I want to gain some muscle and flexibility. 

My plan:

1. 5 day Cooler Cleanse to cut out all the nasty cravings and shrink my stomach some. 
2. Daily yoga to improve flexibility / reduce back pain.
3. Shred diet to lose pounds.
4. Find forms of exercise that don’t bore me to death.
5. Institute a new healthy living lifestyle.

Seems simple when it’s put into a few lines like that, but it’s just not.  My main problem is time.  I want to cook fresh meals but I have at most 2 hours at night in which to cook dinner, eat, help the kid with homework and get her to bed.  Most nights it’s only 1.5 hours.  My husband works grave shift so there’s no help there, I’m all along all evening after work.  The only time I see my entire family in one place is on the weekends, but my spouse and I both work 6 days a week so this time is precious to me and I don’t want to spend it all doing chores and weekly food prep. 

Lack of family time also ramps up the stress level.  I work with process servers and debt collection, so my job is just one big load of stress most days.  I work with someone whose moods change by the hour most days as well, which doesn’t help.  I don’t have any other options until I finish my degree however so I just bite my tongue and seeth in silence and try to cope.  Then there’s running the household, paying bills, trying to keep up with cleaning and on and on. 

I come from a long line of worriers, which I think is why we all have weight problems too.  Depression and anxiety, those are as hereditary as the bad back and migraines for us.  Mental and health problems feed each other in a vicious cycle, but just because I can see the cycle doesn’t make it any easier to break out of.  I’m going to do my best to do exactly that though.

Sunday was my birthday.  Another year older, another year of depression and bad health that I can’t get back.  But I can change moving forward, and that’s what has to happen, what WILL happen.  My daughter is being evaluated for ADD this month, and I’m pretty sure the diagnosis will be that she has it.  This means I have to change all of our lifestyles in order to enable her to be the best she can be.  That will be my motivation, the best motivation since doing it for myself doesn’t seem to stick through the depression. 

Today is the first day of my cleanse.  I am dying of hunger at this point in the day, but I am determined to stick with my cleanse and get healthy.  For me, the juice cleanse serves as a condensed version of the first phase of South Beach, and I feel phenomenal after doing it.  The first two days are the worst, when I’m getting all the caffeine, sugar and water bloat out of my system.  After that I have more energy, I sleep better, I feel better about myself (probably because I don’t feel like an exhausted bump on a log for once).

Just take it one day at a time…

…and so it begins.

~j